Instinct: A Dark Sci-Fi Romance Read online

  Most of my people are not technically alive to shame him anyway. At any given time, most of our living members are in stasis, frozen in time. There are fields of people frozen, waiting for there to be a reason to exist again. It turns out, a perfect existence without pain or suffering is incredibly boring—and it also turns out that it is a lot more sustainable to keep a million or so people on ice than it is to have them walking around eating and excreting.

  I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree with most things the Patron says and does. I am his youngest and most rebellious child, and he will never quite forgive me for existing.

  But that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that I am here in orbit around the remnants of old human civilization.

  I start to mess with the controls. The ship put itself into ideal orbit, but I’m not satisfied. I want to get lower. I want to see more. I want to get eyes on what’s going on below.

  Hours pass as I hunt for humanity. Maybe days. I lose track of time as I scour the lands for views of what I know must be down there. I am almost asleep in my chair when the grainy image of several bipeds flashes across the lower corner of the screen.

  Bolting upright in my chair, I work to get a better view. It’s not great. I am limited to a top down view, and it is in such low resolution I can’t tell if these are the descendants of the lost humans, or some coincidental bipedal analogue.

  I have to get closer.

  The ship can’t go any lower without coming out of orbit, but there’s a shuttle I can take down quite a lot lower. It’s built for atmospheric entry, and it will allow me to observe these creatures with a much better resolution and degree of accuracy. But I’m not supposed to take the shuttle. I’m supposed to stay on the ship.

  Tapping impatiently, I try to get a better view of the action below, already knowing I can’t get a closer shot.

  The order I was given about reporting any signs of life has long been forgotten. This is my discovery, and the thrill of it makes me able to ignore petty things like protocol and orders. I push up from my chair and I start getting ready.

  I have to prepare the machine, and myself. Leaving the ship means getting protective gear on, a slick suit that conforms tightly to my body enough that no external atmosphere has a chance of penetrating if I choose to wear the hood. I almost never do. It gets sweaty in there and it makes me look like I’m wearing a full body swim condom. Not a cute look, even if I am all alone out in space.

  The shuttle is powered up and ready. Its observation tools aren’t as powerful as the ship’s, but I will be able to get so close it won’t matter. I set the coordinates in the navigation panel to the ones I saw the bipeds at, and I set off, detaching from my ship and dropping down into the atmosphere of Hades Exile.

  The world rises up to swallow me. I find myself flirting with the sky, zooming over the rolling planet below. The subjects I located on the ship come into view. They are blissfully unaware of me above them as I set my devices to record and start to observe what seems to be mating behavior.

  A pack of large males appear to be courting a female. By courting, I mean chasing her about in a field. I zoom in to make sure she is alright—not that I’m allowed to do anything if she isn’t.

  There is a big smile plastered across her face as she leads the males on a chase. She is more nimble than they, and perhaps a little faster. Either that, or they are humoring her in her attempts at escape.

  The female has long dark hair that flows from her head and she is entirely naked aside from a strip of clothing that covers her sex. It’s hard to tell what she looks like exactly, but my heart is beating faster because she really does look quite human. Not like me, precisely, but close.

  The males have overtaken her and are surrounding her. She turns to face each of them, spinning around in place. They seem to be communicating. Are they speaking?

  I want to get closer. I hope they don’t move from this field. Mating has always been a fascination of mine but it rarely takes place where I can see it. The resolution on my optics is good for what it is, but I’m still obscured by things like trees and caves, so unless they all start fucking in the open... oh. There they go.

  As I look on from my perch in the sky, the female is taken between them. Though she likely only has a single vaginal canal, they seem to be too impatient to wait for that cavity, so they make liberal use of her mouth and her hands, and very possibly her anus as well.

  The smaller shuttle has much better optics for being closer. I can zoom right in to the point I can almost see the male members. They are very much like the male anatomy of our own species. Evolution is a mistress of habit. She likes a four-limbed base model, with alternate wings if you insist on them, or flippers if you want to go in the water. Two eyes, for the most part, if you’re going to bear live young. She has rules. Rules that haven’t been challenged for a long time. Our scientists used to try. Why not four arms and no legs? It turned out two arms were repurposed as legs fairly quickly. Why not three eyes and no nose? Also had its disadvantages.

  There are ways things are done, even on far-flung planets like this one. One of the rules I’ve yet to see broken is crude, but simple: females get fucked.

  Genital configuration is also one of Mistress Evolution’s sticking points. One has an out bit. One has an in bit. Sometimes the out bit will break off and stay in the in bit, as in the case of the Rectari, who mate via the anal canal, but the basic formula is usually the same.

  I have seen old footage of a lot of mating in my time. It is a particularly popular section of our cultural archives, referred to affectionately as ‘the hub.’ I am yet to experience the ritual of mating myself. Reproduction is a classified and restricted activity. If I had been chosen for one of the very rare breeding positions, I would have had any number of offspring now—not that I would have known them. We don’t tolerate tedious ‘parenting.’ Our small ones soon work out which tube of their personal pod is for nutrition and which is for waste, and we have many instructive and educational videos for them to watch as they grow to full size.

  I ease the ship a little lower in orbit. There is decent cloud cover. I’ll be fine. They won’t see me. These creatures show little in the way of human intelligence. I imagine they are no different mentally to many of the other automaton-like creatures I observe, going along predetermined patterns of behavior without much in the way of thought or concern.

  The audio isn’t good from this distance, even if the view is better. It would be nice to see from an angle other than top down though, there’s only so much I can glean from the top of a bobbing head. I need to see expression, I need to hear reactions.

  At this distance, it is impossible to tell if the female is in ecstasy, or if the males are taking their pleasure at her cost.

  I should get just a little closer. Another few thousand feet and I will be in audio range. I’ll also be close enough to have to use the thrusters to avoid gravity. Out of orbit and into range I go, barely thinking about the additional risks I’m incurring.

  Wet slapping and animal grunts suddenly burst over the speakers. Oh, yes. Those are the sounds of a vigorous mating in progress. There is no way these creatures speak Intergalactic English, but by sheer coincidence some of their vocalizations sound familiar. The noises they make are deep, rough, and gritty. Wait. Am I imagining it, or are those words I recognize from old language classes? The ones the Patron said were a waste of time because nobody spoke twentieth-century English anymore, nor would they ever again.

  “Bend over. Pussy up. Now.”

  The words rumble through my speakers and I feel excitement slice through me. Those words hold a power, a raw intensity. I know they’re not really words in the way I might use them. They’re mating calls. I can tell, because I am an experienced observer of animal life and also, in all the years we have been observing other planets and systems, we have never found a species as sentient as our own.

  These aren’t people, I have to remind myself. Even if they look lik
e people, and sound like people, I have to avoid anthropomorphizing them.

  Boom!

  Something impacts the left engine of the shuttle. My eyes are locked on the scene below, the carnal viciousness of the male’s actions so utterly spell-binding that I am halfway across the shuttle, thrown by the impact, before I even know it has happened.

  Warning: Projectile lodged in engine, the ship grates in my ear. Losing altitude.

  I crash into the far wall, then into the ceiling, then into the floor again as the shuttle spins. We’re close enough to the planet that there’s gravity. Goddammit. I hate gravity.

  In seconds, I am in free-fall. Whatever hit me knocked my flight systems offline and that means I’m no longer in a shuttle. I am now in a big hunk of metal hurtling toward the ground, fighting controls that are calibrated for the seamless resistance of space and that barely respond in the thick, oxygen-rich atmosphere of the planet.

  The best I can do is slow my descent enough to the point when I impact the ground, I hopefully don’t die immediately. I manage to strap into the chair tight enough that my body is held securely, the emergency systems doing their best to cushion the shock of a terminal speed impact.

  There is noise and rumbling and motion, a sense of intense speed even though I am actually moving slower than I have moved in months. Hitting the ground is like being knocked out of my body. I have never felt anything like it. I feel as though I have been crushed out of existence.

  Chapter Two

  Tselia

  The impact knocks me senseless for I don’t know how long, but when I come to, I am alive. My shuttle is destroyed around me, but I am here. I take a breath and I check my body for pain. The systems deployed decelerators and cushioning devices designed to keep me in one piece. They worked. I am not only alive, I am unharmed. But I’m also on the surface of a foreign planet without authorization. If I get caught down here, I’m done for. They’ll take me away and put me in stasis. This is the definition of interfering in an ecosystem. I’m not supposed to get close enough to be able to crash into the planet. I’m supposed to stay in orbit; that way, if there are any issues, I circle the place rather than smash into it. Not even three hours into my new assignment, I have fucked up. Badly.

  I pull at the buckles keeping me harnessed into the wreckage and crawl out of the place where my windshield used to be, then turn and survey the damage. It’s... bad. The hull is crushed. The wings are gone. It looks more like a shiny saucer-type rock than any kind of spacecraft. I have about as much chance of getting this off the ground as I do of growing wings and flying.

  Panic rises in me, but I do my best to push it down. There’s one option left. If the shuttle’s controls aren’t too damaged, I may be able to summon my ship down using the emergency beacon. That is very, very much against protocol, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

  The beacon is located in what remains of the cockpit, and it’s still intact. I think. That shell is designed to withstand the force of a star going supernova, and it’s the only reason I’m alive. It is also designed to act as a base in emergencies. There are beacons, blankets, spare clothes, generators, and other items that will help me stay alive.

  I practiced crash landings over and over in the academy, but the simulator wasn’t even close to this. I’m shaken, adrenaline coursing through my system, making me stupid as I try to remember what comes next. Our more cynical instructor said something that now comes blazing into my mind: You don’t really want to survive a landing on an alien planet. Quick deaths are better than slow.

  He was a bastard, but he was probably right. I’m breathing air that is likely loaded with all sorts of pathogens. There’s a decent chance that most, if not all things on this planet will kill me.

  My training is starting to kick in. I’m going to need protein sources for the onboard emergency ration generator. There’s no guarantee I can eat anything down here, but if I can gather base resources, the generator should be able to use solar energy to create palatable food for me, extracting the right levels of vitamins and minerals to... oh, who gives a fuck. I’m listing facts in my head to try to calm my nerves, but I know how much trouble I’m in.

  Even if I somehow survive, the Patron and the council are never going to believe this was an accident. If I bring my ship down, the logs will show it entered the atmosphere. They’ll lock me up and freeze me for that. But what can I do? The alternative is having them swing by in three years and catching me down here anyway.

  I try to get rid of some of the adrenaline by walking around the crash site. The area I’ve landed in is open ground. I’ve torn up soil and pale blue grass and left it strewn in my wake, all the way down to a purple- and green-tinged rock below. I have left a scar on the world, but fortunately, not on myself.

  Okay. What am I going to do? Call the ship down? Try to survive down here? Spend some time doing reconnaissance before I go back up? I mean, I’m down here now. May as well look around. I could gather the kind of data I’ve dreamed of. No more on screen readouts. Actual living things to look at.

  Circling back around to the cockpit, I decide to call the ship down. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the correct thing to do. Protocol dictates that if you somehow end up on world, you get off it as quickly as possible. My hand reaches for the beacon, but stops.

  Why the hell am I hesitating? I’ve crash-landed. This is dangerous. This is scary. This is... exciting.

  I pull my hand away and resume my wandering. Maybe if I stay down here just a little I can explore the planet. If I’m going to end up in stasis, maybe I should give myself something to remember while I’m frozen.

  I’ll take care to stay away from anything that looks sentient. Including the humanoids. And maybe the Patron will forgive me. I mean, I did crash. The evidence for that is obvious. Is he really going to think I slammed my shuttle into the planet at near terminal velocity just to rebel against his orders?

  Yeah. He probably will.

  Something rustling in the gold and blue bushes nearby distracts me from my mental war with myself.

  I turn and freeze, trying to remember if I have a weapon in the cockpit. It doesn’t matter. It’s too late.

  There are women emerging from the undergrowth. They don’t look like me. They look vicious. Their lips are curled back from their teeth, their breasts are bared and covered in light down and something bright scarlet red that might be blood and might be pigment. They look like animals, and they act like beasts. They are clutching weapons in their hands, spears and knives. One has a rock. It should be laughable, but clutched in that big hand, it is frightening. There is no doubt that they intend to hurt me.

  The sound that emerges from them is a high-pitched shriek of rage and angst, a frightening sound for being so much like speech, and yet so very far from it. These are women, just like I am, but they are wild, and I can see in their narrowed pupils, fierce gazes, and long nails that they intend to hurt me.

  I run for the cockpit, hoping I can grab something to fight them with, but even though I don’t have to go nearly as far as they do, they are faster than I am. Much faster. Extended space travel has left my muscles weakened and made me slow.

  I turn and I run screaming. They give chase, their screeching cries ringing in my ears. I can feel the impacts of their feet pounding on the earth behind me, a thudding thundering that is echoed in the drumming of my heart.

  Just as I reach the cockpit, something comes tearing over the top of it. A fierce roar erupts over my head, and several hundred pounds of pure muscle flies over me. I cower against the cockpit, my arms over my head in a defensive position. But that does not save me. The animal above me imposes its will on the rushing pack and I am safe.

  I dare look up to see a male gesticulating over my head, protecting me with the tall bulk of his body. He is massive and incredible. His eyes are the color of the sky. His hair is jet black and long, down to his shoulders, thick and lustrous. His chest is broad and his arms are like two gr
eat sinewy snakes with big meat hammers at the ends for hands. His upper body is bare. His lower body is obscured from waist to powerful knees by a skirt of animal skins, spotted pelts covering his manhood.

  It seems that a conflict must be inevitable, but he doesn’t hurt a single one of the females. He doesn’t even lay a finger on them. He doesn’t have to. They retreat from his roar, chattering noisily, but moving away from me nonetheless. There is no doubt he just saved my life.

  Cowering at his feet, I hope for the best, but fear the worst. I don’t know if I have truly been rescued, or if this beast of a humanoid is simply going to devour me himself. There is a hunger in his eyes as they sweep down at me, running over my body with a naked curiosity.

  He beckons me up with a quick motion of his hand. I am too frightened to stand, not knowing what he wants from me, but he removes the element of choice by taking hold not of my hand, but a thick handful of hair at the back of my head. With that firm grasp, he eases me to my feet and inspects me even more thoroughly. Drawn up to my tiptoes, I can do nothing but breathe and try to hold still enough not to anger him.

  He is a descendant of my ancestors. He and I share much in the way of precious genetic code, but held in his grasp I feel caught by an animal. His jaw is so big, his eyes so narrowed and squinting, but bright with what I know I must be imagining is intellect.

  The females are still standing nearby, chattering. They are watching this discovery unfold with as much curiosity as the male.

  My hand goes to my side. Suddenly, I realize that I am not as helpless as I thought. The belt on my suit does contain a few emergency items, and one of them is a handheld device capable of delivering several thousand volts at very low current. It’s designed to be used in event of being boarded while in transit. I forgot all about it because I’ve never used it before.